DEI Initiatives at Yıldız Holding

“We believe in the power of an Inclusive Culture at the workplace”

Human-centred policies and practices are needed to build a sustainable future. Organizations of the future are discovering the importance of being people and purpose-oriented rather than profit-oriented. I believe that this goal can only be achieved with the equal participation of women in society and the economy.

Strengthening the culture of diversity and inclusiveness also contributes to societies becoming stronger and more resilient. The work we have done so far has concretely shown us that diversity in the workplace is the key to innovation, growth and lasting success.

Our differences enrich us, provide opportunities for talent diversity and increase our potential to produce rapid solutions with different perspectives.

Inclusive Culture & DEI Initiatives

It is important for the future of the business world that companies first determine their current situation and then create policies that support equal opportunities at every level of the organization and encourage equal compensation and career advancement for women. The prerequisite for providing an inclusive work culture is to include employees in the process and design participatory processes. At Yıldız Holding, we continue our work in line with our “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” approach with a holistic approach that covers all our employees. We include all our employees, both women and men, in our activities aimed at equal opportunities, which we see as a common subject for all of us, and create learning and experience-sharing areas by listening to each other.

On the other hand, we undertake many studies to transform our entire ecosystem to ensure equal opportunities in our value chain. To ensure women's effective economic participation, we support women entrepreneurs and businesses with purchasing principles sensitive to equal opportunities.

Diversity, equal opportunities and inclusiveness are among Yıldız Holding’s global values. Based on this view, we established the Yıldız Holding Women's Platform in 2021 to transform the culture of equal opportunities in all our companies into a more substantial and permanent structure globally. We aimed for the platform to be a living platform that includes all our employees, both women and men. Through the establishment of the Yıldız Holding Women's Platform, our objective is to enhance the participation of women in the economy, further empower the capabilities of our female employees, and ensure their active involvement in higher-level positions and decision-making processes within our organizations.

Following the establishment of the Yıldız Holding Women's Platform, we brought together our approach to equal opportunities and women's empowerment under the "Yıldız Holding Equal Opportunity and Women's Empowerment Manifesto", reflecting the suggestions of all our employees from Türkiye and around the world. With this manifesto, we promised to create a common Yıldız Holding corporate culture, free from prejudice and cross-country and cross-cultural, where all our employees are respected and valued as individuals. Our manifesto covers four areas: "Discourse, Business Environment, Ecosystem and Value Chain", and we continue our work under these headings.

We do not see equal opportunities and diversity as only concerns our Holding and companies. We work for a more sustainable future with projects that spread throughout our ecosystem and aim to create opportunities that spread throughout society. Therefore, while prioritizing participation, equality and pluralism in all our business processes, we observe equal opportunities in the women entrepreneur ecosystem and our value chain. Based on this goal, we participated in the Women's Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (WEA) launched by the United Nations Women's Unit (UN Women) in 2022. Within the scope of this program, we accelerated the exemplary practices of Yıldız Holding and its companies that encourage women's entrepreneurship. With this cooperation agreement we signed with UN Women, we committed to supporting women's entrepreneurship in the regional and global supply chain.

Another important collaboration with UN Women is expanding the Gender Sensitive Procurement and Investment (GRPI) Program. This program focuses specifically on women in our supply chain. We are working to increase the representation of women in the supply chains of our companies and production facilities in Türkiye and around the world. We aim for our companies to prioritize women entrepreneurs in their supply chains so that women have income-generating job opportunities and contribute to the national economy.

I want to give examples of concrete work we have carried out to support women entrepreneurs.

Kerevitaş’s leading frozen food brand, SuperFresh, is carrying out the ‘Women Stars of Agriculture’ project under the leadership of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and in cooperation with the Yıldız Holding Women’s Platform. Our ministry significantly supports this project, in which we plan to increase the number of women farmers. The main goal of our project was to increase the rate of women farmers supported by 100% in 3 years, and we achieved this goal in just one year. With the project, we provide contracted women farmers with purchase guarantees and advance support, and we are with them with expert agricultural engineers at every stage, from seed selection to harvest. Achieving the project goals in such a short time has also motivated us to take new steps. Last year, we conducted a social impact analysis with the participation of our farmers in the Women Stars of Agriculture project. We identified new areas to focus on in the project. Within the Women Stars of Agriculture scope, we will continue to implement many programs that will add value to the production and development of women farmers, especially restorative agricultural practices and efficiency-focused training in the coming period.

ŞOK Markets are carrying out another important project aimed at empowering women economically. With the “I’m Also Here in Şok” project, handmade products produced by various women’s cooperatives from different regions of Türkiye, especially in the earthquake zone, are sold at ŞOK Markets without any profit motive. With the Şok’ta Ben Also Here project, over 100 thousand products have been purchased from women’s cooperatives, and more than 10 million TL of economic value has been created.

We aim to increase the number of women business partners who own their stores under the Seç sign at Seç Market in the upcoming period. Within this scope, we have launched the “Güçünle Gülümse” project for women entrepreneurs. We will continue to support women entrepreneurs in the upcoming period with the entrepreneurship and retail management training program we launched in collaboration with Boğaziçi University Lifelong Education Center (BÜYEM) from Türkiye.

Ülker, with its sustainable cocoa supply approach, conducts comprehensive studies on responsible value chains, support for cocoa producers and traceability of cocoa supply in the Ivory Coast. Within the scope of the More Than Cocoa project, studies are carried out to provide various skills to women farmers in cocoa farming communities and empower them. Ülker also continues the More Than Cocoa Project, which includes training, good agricultural practices, and support for farmers who want to contribute to sustainable hazelnut farming. 33 of the 100 farmers in the project, which also saw increased productivity and yield, are women farmers.

Yıldız Ventures continues to make significant contributions through Venture Capital funds or direct investments by providing financial support exceeding $5 million to more than 85 women entrepreneurs worldwide.

Seeing that our work is appreciated nationally and internationally makes us happy. In 2023, we were proud to see the work of the Yıldız Holding Women's Platform presented as an example to the whole world at the "UN Women Global Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs" special session at the United Nations Headquarters. Selected as a case study by the London Business School in 2024, the Yıldız Holding Women's Platform was the best indicator that we are also pioneering work internationally.

Women Empowerment

We meticulously follow up the work within the scope of our commitments under the “Work

Environment” title in Yıldız Holding Equal Opportunity and Women’s Empowerment Manifesto in all our companies. In this context, we first identify the areas that prevent equal opportunities in the work environment, set and follow measurable targets for development areas, and share the steps we take transparently. We address equal opportunities at the highest level, set performance targets for our managers and design policies and processes to implement equal opportunities in every area of ​​the work environment.

We set targets to increase the number of female employees in senior management levels, including the Board of Directors, and conduct studies to develop role models. We identify the competencies of our female employees and support their career plans. We conduct training and mentoring programs and follow their development with our monitoring and evaluation processes. We develop policies to encourage and reward our employees who make a difference regarding equal opportunities.

We do not approach our human resources processes from a women's or men's perspective; we offer equal and fair rights to all our employees in areas such as recruitment, promotion, wages, fringe benefits, development, and workload.

In 2024, we also received an important certification documenting our approach to this issue internationally. Last year, to officially document the wage equality between our female and male employees, we completed the two-stage evaluation process conducted by the Switzerland-based International EQUAL-SALARY Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). We became the first holding company to receive the 'EQUAL-SALARY Certificate' in the food and retail sector.

Within the scope of the certification process that we voluntarily applied for, our company's diversity and inclusiveness-based data, wage policy, recruitment processes, promotion and fringe benefits were comprehensively examined with a scientific methodology. At the end of this meticulously conducted process, we were deemed worthy of receiving the 'Equal Pay Certificate', a document that adds value to the employer brand worldwide. The Equal Pay Certificate also documents the pioneering work carried out by Yıldız Holding to establish equal opportunities in the workplace.

At Yıldız Holding, we continue to increase our employees' competencies and strengthen female leadership in senior management.

This year, we focused on training, especially in line with our goal of increasing the number of women employees in leadership positions. With the "First Step Executive Leadership Program", we aimed to develop the leadership competencies of employees who will take on management roles for the first time. For our women employees with advanced careers, we created a training program in partnership with the "Pladis Leadership Development Programme" and London Business School, where innovative leadership competencies are taught and made more effective through peer studies.

We continue to train future leaders with our Commercial Talent program. The program, which lasts approximately one and a half years and allows participants to develop themselves in different departments such as sales, sales operations, supply chain and marketing thanks to the rotation application, also offers participants the opportunity to grow in line with their talents with training, coaching and mentoring practices. In the last two years, 66% of those hired with the Pladis Commercial Talent Program were women.

Yıldız Holding C-Level DEI Training Program was one of the awareness studies we carried out to increase the knowledge base in diversity, equity and inclusion in senior management and accelerate integration into the company culture. In this context, our managers were informed about current trends and good practices in DEI issues, from communication language to business conduct.

Half of the employees who participated in the mentoring programs within Yıldız Holding last year were our women employees. On the other hand, we are working in many areas to adapt Yıldız Holding Working Principles to today's dynamics from the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity perspective. In this context, with the important work carried out by our company, we are formalizing our approaches in strategic areas such as advertising, marketing, sales and supply chain by turning them into a manifesto.

As Yıldız Holding, within the framework of our membership in the Unstereotype Alliance, we base our advertising and promotional activities on the principles of inclusiveness and diversity. In our advertising and marketing activities, we aim for a cultural transformation based on equal opportunities, and in this direction, we ensure that all our communications are inclusive. We regularly monitor the performance of these activities using the metrics and measurement criteria we have determined.

In Yıldız Holding and our companies, we aim to encourage a social transformation that the entire business world can emulate by supporting women's active participation in decision-making at all levels, especially in management positions.

According to our Women's Platform report data, we increased our female employee ratio from 37% in 2019 to 46% last year. In the same period, we increased our female employee ratio on the boards of directors from 14% to 26%, encouraging the increase in female representation in our companies' decision-making mechanisms. The fact that the female employee ratio promoted last year was 57% concretely supports Holding's vision of having more female employees at senior management levels.

As Yıldız Holding, we also support and encourage our senior female leaders to participate actively in the Women in Boards of Directors Association (YKKD) to increase the ratio of women on the board of directors.

We continue our work to increase diversity at all our management levels and the ratio of women in senior management by 2030.

Determining the competencies of our female employees within the Holding and supporting their career plans are among the issues we care about. For this purpose, we prepare training and mentoring programs, provide all the resources needed to increase professional development opportunities, and follow the development of our female employees.

Within the scope of the mentoring activities we carry out under the roof of our women's platform, we are running the Corporate Membership Program with TurkishWin. Our female employees who are included in this global sharing platform where women from different geographies inspire and empower each other; gain a double-sided experience as both mentor and mentee throughout the program and have the opportunity to develop their leadership competencies.

On the other hand, we established the "Let's Shine Together" social network in order to announce the works aimed at empowering women in the workplace, to share inspiring good practices, and to enable female employees to share information. We announce the projects we carry out with the Women's Platform to all our employees and the business world through the website we have created in order to raise awareness on equal opportunities and to provide role models.

With the belief that the prerequisite for creating a corporate culture that respects diversity is to use a communication language that is free of rote learning, we wanted to reflect our stance on “equal opportunities” in our communication language. In order to purify our communication language from prejudices both individually and institutionally, we prepared the “Communication Guide for Equal Opportunities” and made it accessible on our website. This Guide, which all our employees can benefit from in order to build social equality in communication, includes sample statements, resources and suggestions to spread equality in communication language.

People with Disabilities

At Yıldız Holding, we aim for the happiness of all our stakeholders and social benefit with the “Make Happy, Be Happy” approach. While creating safe, inclusive, and supportive work environments for all our employees, we also try to provide an environment where our disabled employees will always feel comfortable and happy regarding accessibility.

We declared 2023 the year of “Diversity and Inclusion,” one of our global values, and accelerated projects in this field in all our companies. We also aimed to encourage our employees to produce projects in this field.

In 2024, at the Stars of the Year Award Ceremony, where the innovative projects of Yıldız Holding employees that add value to society and business were shared, we gave the Chairman of the Board Special Award to a very special project implemented in the “Diversity and Inclusion” category. This project was the ‘Neurodiversity Network’ project developed and implemented by two passionate colleagues at Pladis, Annabelle Williams and Grace Fairey, to transform their difficulties into opportunities and to raise awareness both in the company and society. 

In summary, the objective of the project is to establish an inclusive environment in which all individuals feel valued in their inherent differences and are provided with the resources necessary to more effectively address daily challenges.

As part of the Neurodiversity Network Project, which Annabelle and Grace have implemented in Pladis UK and Ireland, they state that teams made up of ‘neurologically diverse individuals’ are 30% more productive, six times more creative, stand out in terms of resilience and problem-solving, and show high employee loyalty.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TDX Consulting or the Workplace in Action® program. The content and ideas presented by the authors are their personal opinions and should not be considered the official policy or stance of TDX Consulting or the Workplace in Action® program.